Brent crude futures were down 17 cents on the London ICE futures exchange by midday to $46.18. West Texas Intermediate was at $44.61, down two cents. Oliver Jacob or the energy consultancy Petromax said "prices are starting to reach oversold levels."

In the run-up to a November 30 meeting, OPEC officials in Vienna this week failed to work out the preliminary details of production cuts. The Saudis threatened to throw a spanner in the works by raising output if Iran did not cut its own production OPEC sources told Reuters on Friday. OPEC expressed confidence that it would get the cuts done in a statement on Thursday.

OPEC agreed to an output cap between 32.5 million to 33 million barrels per day in late September talks in Algeria. But those caps were preliminary and production quotas for individual nations won't be hammered out until the November meeting--and there's the rub.

There have been signs that Iran, Iraq, Libya and Nigeria might not take part in the cuts. If other countries follow suit, participants at the November 30 confab could walk away from the bargaining table empty handed. Last month Igor Sechin, head of Russia's state-owned oil company, Rosneft, said they would not honor any OPEC production cuts unless there was a price freeze.

Russia and Saudi Arabia are the world's biggest oil producers, each accounting for 12% of the global oil production, followed by the United States (11%) and China and Canada, with about 5% respectively.